Sir, – The Government’s proposed ban on under-18s riding e-scooters isn’t just one more piece of muddled legislation. It is a monument to the kind of thinking that mistakes activity for competence.
By 17, a teenager can legally get behind the wheel of a 3,500kg car and thread it through rush-hour traffic on nothing but “L” plates and a compliant adult in the passenger seat.
At 16, that same teenager can license a 125cc motorbike, or take a multi-tonne agricultural tractor on to a public road. None of this troubles the legislators in the slightest.
But a battery-powered scooter capped at 20km/h? That is where the line is drawn. That is the intolerable menace to public safety.
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The defenders of this ban will point, gravely, to the children turning up in emergency departments with head injuries. And they are right that this is happening. But notice the logic: eliminate the injury by eliminating the rider.
By that reasoning we should ban the bicycle, the rugby pitch, and certainly the 16-year-old’s 125cc motorbike. If head injuries are the concern, and they should be, then the intervention that addresses a head injury is a helmet.
A helmet is cheap. A helmet is enforceable at the point of police inspection. A helmet actually does the one thing this ban does not: it protects the child who is going to ride the scooter regardless.
Instead, the State reaches past the obvious, proportionate remedy and swings a wrecking ball at the entire age group. Because banning something is easy, and requiring something is work.
The stupidity runs deeper still, because the ban doesn’t even aim at the problem it claims to solve. The riders actually terrorising our footpaths and weaving through pedestrian crossings already break every law on the books. They ignore red lights; they will ignore an age limit with the same shrug.
And does anyone seriously believe the Garda will be resourced, empowered or remotely encouraged to chase them down? Of course not.
So here is what we are left with: an unenforceable law that punishes the law-abiding teenager travelling sensibly to school or club, while the reckless minority carry on exactly as before, untouched, unbothered, and laughing.
Legislation as theatre. All performance, no effect. – Yours, etc,
BRIAN LUCEY
Sallins,
Co Kildare.
Sir, – I fear the proposed restrictions on e-scooters may prove to be the thin end of the wedge, paving the way for similar regulation of ordinary non-electrified bicycles.
Too often, governments prefer measures that create the appearance of action rather than addressing the real problem. Cyclists, e-scooter users and pedestrians face daily risks in Dublin, and nationwide, not because of an absence of regulations, but because existing road traffic laws are inadequately enforced against motorists who ignore them.
The proposed regime risks criminalising large numbers of otherwise law-abiding people while doing little to improve road safety. Rather than introducing another layer of bureaucracy for vulnerable road users, the Government should invest in meaningful enforcement of existing laws through widespread use of traffic cameras to detect red light violations, yellow-box offences, speeding and illegal parking.
If technology can automate toll collection, it can also help enforce the rules that make our roads safer for everyone. A little “RoboCop” for road traffic might achieve far more than another licensing scheme. – Yours, etc,
DAN BARRY
Glasnevin,
Dublin 9.
